TNAG-1243-FCO40-1557-Future-of-Hong-Kong-1983 — Page 9

FCO40 Hong Kong Department Records 聯邦事務部香港部檔案 All

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BIR ROBIN DAY

BERNARD LEVIN

SIR ROBIN DAY

PADDY ASHDOWN M.P.

(Liberal)

1

proportion of the population of Hong Kong got there by fleeing communist China, I do not believe there is any obligation higher than to ensure that if they want to leave, naturally only if they want to leave, they are enabled to do so.

But where to go?

I think and I suggested this some months ago that now is the time to

convene an international association

or conference of free nations tomake

sure that, what would it be, two

million, three million Chinese in

Hong Kong if they want to leave, rather than become citizens of a Communist state,

shall be able to do so, and if we start soon, 1997 after all is still quite a long way away, we can so arrange matters that first of all we don't have a great scramble at the last and second we don't have an added immigration problem of our own and no individual country would have so that seems to me a priority far more than making sure that those sky scrapers keep standing up.

Paddy Ashdown, you like Mr. Walden have lived and studied in Hong Kong.

Well let me first of all say that there is an element of Hong Kong which is of course exactly the same as the Falklands, that 3% which is Britain's in perpetuity and I must confess I

agree with what George Walden has said

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